He sang loudly to the tunes of Billy Joel, danced like you do when you don’t think anyone is watching and made a name for himself at his children’s school as the Darryl Kerrigan of the P&C association.
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They are just some of the elements of the man Glen Turner has been revealed as being.
His mother described him as a son with funny ways who had such silly little things to do and say.
University mates opened other doors into his earlier life. His partner told of other personal foibles and sometimes fickle characteristics that endear us to others too.
And so at a packed-to-the-rafters Dungowan memorial hall on Saturday his family, friends and colleagues celebrated the life of Glen Turner.
For others of us who could not count ourselves in his inner life, there has been bewilderment and curiosity, too – and pain for a man caught in such bizarre headlines as there have been.
No-one who was not at that memorial service cannot be moved by the simplicity and the colourful, and compelling descriptions of this man who lost his life too soon in a tragedy near Moree last week.
Those who knew and love him, worked beside him and counted him as a mate, have left us his legacy with the words used in the eulogies delivered to the memorial service.
They were words not blind to reality but real life descriptions of a bloke with a love for living and caring.
Tamworth principal Lee Preston, one of those to speak to the mourners, was one who has given us such a close, personal and powerful image of an ordinary man in an ordinary world, but with some extraordinary traits that bear witness to his life.
“He was the Darryl Kerrigan of the P&C, he was an ideas man,” Mr Preston said, linking Glen to the optimist battler character of actor Michael Caton in that classic Aussie film, The Castle.
“Some of these ideas were brilliant and some were bloody bizarre, and sometime I had to tell Glen he was dreamin’,” Mr Preston said.
What a wonderful valedictory, what a great testimony. In laughter there are tears but the joy of understanding more.
So, as we go about our life in the wake of Glen Turner’s death, doesn’t it behove us to acknowledge that this is a man who lost his life doing the job he loved.
Just like David Rixon, the Tamworth highway patrolman gunned down two years ago.
Just like then, now we can pay our respects to a man we might not have known, but know better through the eyes of those who mourn him most.
Vale Glen Turner. RIP.
A special trust has been set up for the family of Glen. Details are on page 5 today.
